Dumas, AR

Dumas is a Desha County city in the flat Arkansas Delta, west of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. The 2020 census counted 4,001 residents. William B. Dumas arrived in 1870, bought farmland, and gave the town its name; the Missouri Pacific Valley Line later carried crops and new residents into the town. Floodwater is part of the local memory. In 1916, boats reached Lee Brothers store, and during the 1927 flood the Kerch Canal helped keep the water from rolling through the center.

ATTRBrandonrush / CC BY-SA 3.0

Today, Dumas still reads as an agricultural crossroads, with a downtown history preserved through the Desha County Museum, old farm and medical equipment, log houses, a one-room schoolhouse, a plantation commissary, and an 1870 African-American church. The town's musical calling card is ‘I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas,’ celebrated each year at Ding Dong Days with a parade, fish fry, train rides, and local performances. Dumas has a lot of water in its history, but the place keeps pulling that story back to roads, crops, music, and a main street that had to learn how to live above the flood line.